


Captured!

by WritingWren



Series: Mother Hens of Marmora 'verse [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: But part of a series, Happy Ending, Lots of Angst, One Shot, Some Fluff, antok is a very protective and a very proud dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 06:38:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12053400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingWren/pseuds/WritingWren
Summary: Keith and Pidge go on a stealth mission that goes very, very wrong. But don't worry, help is on the way -do they need it, though?





	Captured!

**Author's Note:**

> What a ride. So I just spent literally all day writing this and I don’t know if it’s good or not, but here you go anyway (especially Shimmer712 and Dev because you were kinda asking for it): Part 3 of the Mother Hens of Marmora ‘verse, where Keith is captured by the enemy and very surreal things happen.
> 
> On another note, the Galra in this fic actually speak their own language (not a lot of it though) which I have taken from [these posts](http://voltronrising.tumblr.com/post/152316008660/galran-language-part-four-nouns-phrases) on tumblr (that haven’t got enough notes imo) by [voltronrising!](http://voltronrising.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Enjoy~

Keith has a bad feeling about it when Pidge pulls him into what has become her tech-laboratory over time. She’s way too secretive about this; and when she starts talking he knows that he was right. Apparently, that one time they infiltrated Sendak’s ship to get the red lion, she managed to copy some data from their server, and she found her father and brother. There wasn’t much about her father, but she’s been analyzing that data and found something that looks like a transport route; the pictures of the captive are pictures of her brother. She thinks that maybe the Galra want to use his technical knowledge or something, because there’s a lot of stops on that list. One of the most recent ones is a rather small Galra outpost, no more than ten, maybe a dozen, stationed soldiers.

“If he’s still there, maybe we can get him out,” she says, desperate. Keith knows that her missing family members are her weak spot; he knows she would do anything to get them back. It’s why she entered the Garrison in the first place.

“Alright,” he says, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go talk to the others about this. We’ll work something out.”

“But we don’t have the time!” she protests. “I don’t know how long he’ll be there for, if he even still is…” A pause. “And what if Shiro doesn’t think it’s worth it? What if he says the chance of finding Matt at all on that outpost is too small to risk it?”

Obviously, Pidge has been thinking about this for long enough to convince herself of Shiro going to be a total asshole about it. Which he would never do; Keith knows that and she should, too. He’s pretty sure that Shiro wants to save the Commander and Matt almost as much as Pidge does. But it’s about her family and Keith doesn’t hold it against her that her rational thinking doesn’t work as well as it usually does. He wants to help her -family in general is a secret (maybe not so secret) weakness of Keith- but he’s not going to go behind Shiro’s back.

When Pidge keeps arguing, he reminds her of time being a very sensitive factor in Matt’s possible rescue and in the end she gives in. They don’t call a meeting with all of them, just hurry to find Shiro and explain the whole situation to him.

“We need to be careful, because it’s a very small outpost on a small planet, so only one of us can go in, and Keith is the best option. I’ll take him with Green and leave before the cloaking shield stops working, but hide close enough to hack into their system so I can guide him through, and get him out as soon as he’s looked at the cells and-“

Shiro raises his hands to stop her. “That sounds like you thought it all through. I’m going to be honest, I don’t like you going in there on your own, but I know you’re both more than capable. If there really is the possiblity of saving Matt, you have my permission to go -on the condition that you stay in contact with the castle, of course. Go on, and I’ll tell the others.”

One bear hug from Pidge later they’re on their way to Green and a little later on their way to the Galra outpost. It’s a long way without the castle’s wormhole ability and it’s a good thing that one of the latest updates Pidge and Hunk did on the lions was fitting all of them with a minifridge on Hunk’s insistence.

Time is difficult, deep in space; none of their watches were working when they first got to the castle, but Pidge managed to build her own one. If it works right it takes them about two days to get to their destination, all the while reporting back to the castle in two hour intervals. It sucks that they can’t just use a wormhole, but on a planet at small as the one they’re going to infiltrate, chances are too high that they’d be discovered right away.

It all goes to plan, Keith gets into the outpost and Pidge hides close, hacks into their system and starts guiding Keith. It’s a rather small building and the cell tract isn’t much of a tract at all; three cells and, sadly, all of them are unoccupied. But when Keith’s about to tell her the news, there’s only white noise and that’s when he realizes something must’ve gone wrong.

He doesn’t have the time to try to contact her again; suddenly there’s two silhouettes at the other end of the corridor, one of them yelling, “Hey! Who are you? What’re you doing here?!” Keith curses and gets ready to fight them when they start running towards him -Pidge might have known another way out, but it is like it is and he needs to get past them to escape.

It's a relatively short fight, but it’s long and loud enough to alert others. Keith can hear steps coming closer and does the math; two down means about ten are still around. He needs to get out of here, and fast. As he’s running, he tries to contact Pidge again, to no avail. This is bad. She might’ve been attacked, and neither her nor Green are the best at combat. She’s the expert for tech and infiltration, stealth missions like this one should’ve been. What the hell has gone wrong?

Having trusted Pidge to guide him, Keith hasn’t paid as much attention to the way as he should have, rather having taken care to stay undetected. And suddenly there’s two more in front of him, and three behind him, and five-on-one they eventually manage to overpower him, though he at least takes out two of them in the process. They make short work of it and Keith is thrown into one of the cells -without his bayard, of course. He’s lost his helmet somewhere on the way, too. He needs a while to catch his breath and looks around; nothing much in here, a metal cot that seems to be a part of the wall, with a thin matress, is all.

He curses some more and then sighs. Just how is he going to get out of this?

*

Back in her lion, Pidge is in trouble. She notices too late that someone has noticed _her_ in their system. When she looses all contact to Keith and the monitors she’s been watching the security footage on flicker and turn black, she doesn’t know what to do at first. Nothing works, and she’s not used to nothing working, because usually she’s the one who can do about anything, at least with tech and everything mechanic. The worst thing is that she can still hear Keith, he just can’t hear her, it seems. She can hear him calling out for her, cursing, and then somebody else yelling from a distance. The noises turn to fighting, then running and already heavier breathing.

“C’mon, Pidge,” she hears Keith mutter. “I need you right now, dammit!” And it breaks her heart to hear more fighting after that, and what she thinks is Keith’s defeat. “Take his weapon!” she hears somebody else ordering, and this is all her fault. She can’t even contact the castle like this; when she tries she gets through for a second, long enough to see Lance before he’s gone. It doesn’t work after that; though she might be able to fix that one, unlike her connection to Keith. She’d just need a little time, but that’s when she’s attacked by three Galra fighters coming from the outpost.

She manages to get away somehow, hides behind a big rock until she can activate the cloaking shield. She’s taken a few hits by that time and she’s not sure how reliable the shield is for now, but she gets away and hides on the other side of the outpost, far enough away to not be discovered, but also too far away to hack back into their systems even if she got hers to work again. She takes a moment to catch her breath before she starts fixing Green. It seems to take forever until she’s done with the most basic things, namely the shield and communication.

*

Hunk is the one who’s been staying behind on the bridge most of the time, only letting take one of the others over for short breaks, trips to the bathroom and the kitchen. He’s been talking to Pidge every two hours and has otherwise stayed just in case something went wrong. It does the next time he lets Lance take over. When he comes back, the blue paladin looks slightly panicked.

“Hunk,” he says, relieved. “Dude, I just saw Pidge, for, like, a second, and then she was gone, and she looked like she was in trouble!”

Hunk is usually pretty laid-back, but now he turns serious. “Let me have a look.” He tries to build a connection to Pidge and Green, but it just won’t work. “Go get the others,” he instructs Lance. “Tell them we might have a problem.” The blue paladin leaves without another word. Hunk keeps trying, but nothing works. It’s not a problem with the ship, it’s a problem with Green’s systems. If the lion’s systems are damaged he can’t do anything from here. By the time he’s sure there’s nothing he can do, Lance is back with all the others, Allura and Coran, the other paladins and their resident Galra.

“Hunk?” Shiro asks, “What’s going on?”

There’s no reason to beat around the bush. “We’ve lost them. They’re probably in trouble; Green’s systems are not online anymore and I can’t contact either of them.”

Shiro pales at that -the members of his team being caught by the Galra is probably his worst nightmare- but before he can say anything, Antok roars. Hunk shrinks back from him a little.

“Hey,” he says. “Let’s not kill the messenger, yeah?”

Antok ignores him. He speaks to Kolivan, “I knew this was a bad idea from the beginning! I say we go and get him out of there right now.”

Kolivan nods. “Both of them,” he emphasizes.

“We need to be careful about this,” Shiro joins in. “We don’t know their status _or_ exact location. Coran, how quick can you get us a wormhole?”

“A few Vargas, I fear, up to a Quintant! I had to turn off the system for maintenance…”

“Alright, then, that gives us some time to prepare.” Shiro looks at all the paladins. “I’m not going to endanger another member of the team any more than necessary. You’ve heard Coran: a few Vargas up to a Quintent, get everything you need and check your weapons. We’re going to get them out of there. Just in and out, before the Galra can call for reinforcements.” He looks at their Galra, “Are you with us?” he asks, just to make sure.

“Of course we are!” Thace exclaims. “They have our -Keith. They have Keith.”

“And we’re not going to let them hurt him,” Antok adds, growling.

Kolivan nods. “We are with you.”

*

The Galra part of Keith misses his pack by now. He hasn’t been able to sleep with them in a few days and he feels it. He just hopes Pidge managed to contact the castle; even if she didn’t, they probably know something’s wrong already and are on their way. He just has to wait. He hopes Pidge is alright. Keith is, for now. Nobody has come to his cell yet. He still has his Galra knife-slash-saber, because he’s not carrying it openly and they didn’t check him for other weapons, but it won’t help him much; and even if he could get out of here, they have his bayard now. He has to get it back first. No, he needs to wait for the right moment.

There’s nothing more he can do apart from overthinking what might have happened to Pidge - _she_ _’_ _s fine, Keith, she_ _’_ _s fine-_ so he lies down on the cot and tries to get some much needed sleep.

He has to have dozed off for a while, because the next time he opens his eyes, there’s one of his captors in front of his cell. Keith sits up, alert and wary, and watches him; the Galra talks in a language Keith doesn’t know, so he doesn’t say anything for now. It sounds as if the Galra was asking him something, but the words don’t make sense. The other looks somewhat upset and confused, but when Keith doesn’t answer he leaves him alone.

That’s when it clicks. He does miss his pack. Did he call out in his sleep again? It’s not like he can control that, it’s just one of the instincts that come with his Galra half. So what if he did, and that Galra, just like his real pack, was affected by it? What were Kolivan’s words again? _You are waiting until you are so distressed that you call out in your sleep. That causes distress to every knowing Galra around, which happens to be us_. Only that it’s not them this time, but his captors. They’re still Galra, and they do have the same instincts, he guesses. It’s just a question of if he can use that to manipulate them.

To do that he’d need to play the lost kit. It’s something he never, ever, wanted to do, but if it gets him out of here… That has to be his priority, not his pride. He needs to find Pidge and make sure she’s alright, too. And his bayard. As soon as he has it back he just needs to wait for the right moment to attack, and then they’ll see that he’s a paladin of Voltron -strange that they haven’t figured that out yet; it seems they’re so far away from the empire that news are slow if they reach them at all. He just has to play that part at first. He knows his pride means nothing in this situation, or that it shouldn’t, but that’s harder than it sounds.

He doesn’t even act like that with his own pack, and if they ever expected that of him they would probably lose his respect and trust faster than they can say “Quiznak”. The level of vulnerabilty he shows Antok and the others is the most he can tolerate, and only behind closed doors. Now he’ll have to at least pretend that he’s… that he’s some kind of baby. He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all. But, he tries to tell himself, he isn’t going to show them anything real. He’s just going to pretend, to play the part until he has the possibilty to kick their sorry asses.

That doesn’t make it much better.

When the Galra comes back, he has another one with him. They start arguing; there’s a lot of gesturing, and a lot of gesturing at Keith, and he still doesn’t understand a word, but they’re saying something like… “pattit” a lot, especially when they gesture at him. He tries to swallow his pride and just do it. Now or never. Nobody will have to know. Especially not Lance. He knows what a kit’s whine can do to even the toughest Galra, and he produces the most pitiful one he’s capable of. That’s not something just anybody could fake, and their heads whip around in shock to stare at him, suddenly quiet. Keith tries again. He sees their eyes widen and that’s when he knows it worked.

A moment later the door of his cell is opened and he’s led out, the Galra talking in that weird language, faster than even before. The hand on his arm is gentle, so there’s a good chance they’ve bought it. Well, Keith _is_ a kit, kind of. Just not like they think. He’s led to a room that looks like a kitchen, with a large table and a lot of chairs. Keith is pushed into a chair, carefully, and the Galra makes a gesture for him to stay, repeating the same thing over and over until he’s sure the strange kit has understood. He then fills a cup with a steaming liquid and hands it to Keith; he probably can’t help but fuss over him.

The second Galra leaves and returns with yet another one, talking very quickly. Keith hears “pattit” a lot again. That third Galra raises a brow and comes over to Keith, looking doubting. For once Keith listens to his Galra instincts and makes himself smaller in front of the threat. His pride is getting quite a beating today. _Don_ _’_ _t think about it now, think about getting out first._

“Do you understand me?” the Galra asks, and Keith blinks, because he actually does.

“Yes,” he says, before he can think better of it. He should have just played at not understanding anything at all -or not? It doesn’t matter right now, it’s too late to take back his reply. The Galra looks somewhat relieved.

“Good,” he sighs. “Now-“ he stops, pauses, and doesn’t seem to know where to start. “How old are you?”

“18,” Keith replies innocently, fully knowing what that means for a Galra.

“And you are…”

“I’m half Galra.” And because he sucks at lying, has no idea what he’s doing and even less of an idea of what it would be even _like_ to be a real kit -one of the kind they expect- he adds, “I got lost.”

“You got lost. Here. And happened to wander into an outpost of the empire. Where you happened to take down four of my men. You don’t even speak our language and you don’t _look_ like a Galra, yet my friends here tell me that you are, in fact, a kit in distress. Can you understand how I’m at a loss at what to do with you?” he asks, raking his fingers through his hair exasperatedly. His own hair, luckily. Keith doesn’t think he would’ve been able to keep up the façade if they tried to touch him in a way only his pack is allowed to do.

The young paladin looks away. Shrugs. “I got scared when they came after me.”

“Scared?” the other’s tone of voice sharpens. “ _You_ , a kit, _injured_ my men, _four of them_ because you were _scared?!_ _”_

Keith trusts his Galra instincts and whines again. The other Galra might not have understood a word of their conversation, but the sound tugs on the heartstrings of all three of them. The first two start to pull away the third one -their commander? He said “my men”- who shrugs off their hands and stands on his own, a new argument starting between the three. Now, Keith thinks, now’s the chance. If he can get out the knife and attack while they’re distracted -they’re not even looking at him, obviously the unarmed kit is not a threat to them- he might be able to escape.

He watches them from the corner of his eye and slowly reaches for the knife when there’s a distant sound of fighting and a roar Keith thinks he might recognize anywhere; though that might be wishfull thinking. But he uses the moment to pull out and transform his knife into an actual blade and attacks the three Galra from behind. Number three curses and draws his weapon as Keith immobilizes number one. A second later the door bursts open with another roar from Antok, who takes out number two without preamble. Kolivan follows close behind.

“You were right,” Keith confides with a grin at number three as they fight. Antok and Kolivan, respecting his honor as a fighter (now that they’re sure he has it under control) stay back and let him end it on his own. “I was never scared. I’m a paladin of Voltron, half Galra, and these guys are my pack.” With that he knocks him out, and he’s never felt as good as he does right now, finally being able to be himself again and even with his pack close by. Though it might be better if the rest of the pack was here, too, but he’s not going to complain for now. He shrinks the saber back to a knife and before he’s even put it away, he is pulled into a tight hug that lasts for a few precious moments.

“I just did the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever had to do,” Keith says for some reason, maybe because he’s still off kilter after everything that’s happened. It feels unrealistic and absurd, like a weird dream instead of reality. Surprisingly, Kolivan seems to understand.

“Don’t tell me you tricked them into thinking you were just a kit.” He laughs quietly. And for Kolivan to actually laugh something groundbreaking has to happen. He was probably as worried as Antok, though, so it might just be relief. “Is that how you ended up in their kitchen?”

“Smart boy,” Antok says proudly, and Keith huffs half-heartedly.

“Don’t call me that. That was the only way to get them to open the door of that cell they’d thrown me in. I know from you guys that Galra can’t help but fuss over any kit in distress.”

“ _Smart boy,_ ” Antok repeats, more emphatic, and Keith sighs but he’s too relieved to see them right now to argue with him.

“Where are the others?” he asks instead.

“Right here,” Ulaz replies from the door. “We were cleaning up after those two berserks.” He holds Keith at arm’s length, looking for any injuries. “Are you alright? Did they injure you?” When Keith shakes his head and replies that it’s just a few scratches he’s pulled in for another hug and a purr he returns. “Good.” The hugs are all too short, over before they’ve begun, but this is still enemy territory; it’ll have to wait until they’re home.

Thace comes in a few minutes later with Keith’s helmet and his bayard, grinning broadly. “Missing something?” he asks, and Keith has never been so happy to see neither Thace, nor his equipment. One regrettably quick bear hug later he’s sobered up a little again.

“Are you on your own?” he inquires. “Is the rest of the paladins with you? Pidge -I don’t know what happened to Pidge, I lost her, we need to find her and-“

Kolivan holds up his hands, hushing him. “We are not, and were able to locate your friend’s lion as soon as we were through the wormhole. The paladins went to retrieve her while we came for you. I hope that is alright with you?” The question carries some of the hidden, quiet humor he is capable of and Keith sighs, relieved.

“Yeah, I guess it’s alright,” he says.

“We should get out of here now, though,” Antok points out, and they do. If the Galra are staying just a bit closer to Keith than they usually would outside of their room, he doesn’t care.

They find the others, and there’s a lot of tears and hugs from Hunk and Pidge, and apologies over apologies from the green paladin Keith all dismisses simply because they’re not needed.

“I’m sorry there was no sign of your brother, though,” he says. “I didn’t find him anywhere.”

Pidge shakes her head. “It’s okay. And he might have been. That program that detected my hacking can’t have been theirs…”  

He gets another hug from Shiro that betrays his calmness, it’s just a little bit too tight, but Keith returns it in the same fashion. Lance doesn’t hug him, but awkwardly pats his shoulder, which, coming from the blue paladin, is almost the same. “Good to have you back, man,” he says.

They return to the castle after that, Keith riding Green with Pidge -apparently there was some damage to the lion she’s managed to fix, mostly- and Antok and Thace, who both refuse to let him out of their sight for now.

Keith doesn’t think for a second that this day will not end in their nest very soon -as soon as they’re back in the castle-, probably with Ulaz checking him over for any injuries, just in case there’s a life threatening one Keith didn’t notice, before he’s allowed into the cuddle pile. He realizes that he doesn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> So in the end I only used one word, pattit, which means “child” and translates as “kitten”, in case you were wondering.  
> Comments and feedback are always appreciated! You can also come find me on [tumblr](https://writing-wren.tumblr.com/)!~


End file.
